My favoured Narrative Mode for novels is Multiple-Subjective-Third in the Past Tense. Or multiple-third-limited/close/deep: or whatever you want to call it when you stick behind one character’s eyes for a scene and then change to another at the scene/chapter break.

Needless to say, I don’t always keep to this for reasons I am about to explain. I sometimes shift POV during the scene and I occasionally head-hop too. The difference between shifting POV and head-hopping is one of degree. (The technical term for Head-Hopping or Shifting POV is Omniscient Third. However, Omniscient Third also includes Multiple Third, Narrator Voice, and a whole host of other techniques, so I’m breaking it down to individual techniques here)

If I just switch the POV from one character to another and then stay in that character’s head for the rest of the scene, then that (to me, the nomenclature for this is personal) is shifting POV.

If, however, I jump between characters, either the same two characters or more than two, and then back again, then that is head-hopping. I am very careful with a head-hopping scene. Doing it only for a specific story-telling purpose, taking great care to make sure the reader knows whose head they are in, and really working at the transitions; otherwise it will appear amateurish and, no matter how much care the writer takes, some people will always say it is wrong, because they think fashion = rules-that-should-never-be-broken.

Head-hopping can be very effective if the writer wants to show both (or more) sides of a conversation or event. It can increase dramatic tension and give the reader information they require.

The alternative is generally either: clumsy expositional dialogue, so the character (other than the POV character in the scene. Remember the writer are rigidly staying behind one pair of eyes because, you know, that’s like a rule innit, guv’nor) can quite literally tell the other character what they are thinking just so the reader can be told; or having to write another scene in the other character’s POV so that the reader can find out what they were really thinking during the conversation.

The first option is appalling and I would rather hand in my keyboard than use it as a general technique (I reserve the right to use any technique at any time if the story requires it).

It could work but only (IMHO) if the character is telling yet another character what they were thinking after the original conversation/event, but that requires the character to be someone who would tell their innermost feelings to somebody else. Not to mention having a somebody else to tell their feelings to in the first place. It can work, but it is liable to be pretty clunky unless it grows out of the character rather than out of the writer’s need to get this info to the reader.

The second option will lead to redundant wordage. One of the biggest problems of writing in Multiple POVs is that every time the writer switches POV they have to reset the scene. It’s the transitions (even if they are using a scene break or a chapter break a transition is needed — an establishing shot if you will) that ups the wordage in a Multiple POV story.

The reader needs to know, WHO/WHAT/WHERE/WHEN as quickly as possible. Yes, there may be occasions when the writer needs to keep that stuff hidden for dramatic purposes, but usually you need the reader to know WHOse head they are in, WHAT is going on, WHERE they are, and WHEN it is happening within the first couple of paragraphs.

If, however, the writer shifts POV or head-hops, then all they have to worry about is the WHO. The other three Ws have already been established in the original set-up to this scene. The reader knows WHAT is going on, because that is the point of the scene. The reader knows WHERE it is happening, because the location has already been established. And the reader knows WHEN it is happening, because there is no time interval involved.

Over the past few decades novels have tended towards the bloated. The insistence on ‘No Head-hopping’ plus the insistence of ‘Show Don’t Tell’ have, in my humble opinion, led to the novel-you-could-beat-a-bear-to-death-with syndrome. Writers were constantly having to write whole scenes just to show something they could show in a couple of words if they just shifted POV for a moment in the scene.

As a general rule I write in Multiple Third, but I’d rather not take a thousand words to get to the point when a hundred, or even ten, will do the same job.

But maybe that’s just me.

PK’s Caveats: Caveat 1: I may not know what I’m blathering about. Caveat 2: There are no rules about writing, there are just things you can get terribly wrong. Caveat 3: If people apply the words never or always to storytelling techniques, ignore them.

Blogroll

An Opinionated Man
My goal with this blog is to offend everyone in the world at least once with my words… so no one has a reason to have a heightened sense of themselves. We are all ignorant, we are all found wanting, we are all bad people sometimes.

Colin F Barnes
A mate, a writer, a publisher, a man with fingers in so many pies I’m surprised the blackbirds ain’t eaten them all.

Deathless Prose
Lisa Lieberman posts reviews and whatever takes her fancy on this blog. A serious academic and an excellent friend.

Geoffrey Gudgion – Author
Contemporary fiction that’s grounded in the past, I like my plots to have a scent of ‘otherness’, an ethereal or spiritual dimension, and to touch on some aspect of English history.

Ink and Bourbon
Tilting at windmills. Because those windmills think they’re better than us — This site is a central directory for the writings of a jaded, nigh unemployable paramedic. (‘A good guy, a great writer, and an inveterate cynic’: SEG)

jae erwin: dancing with life
In my writing I explore our deeper selves – those parts hidden from view. I consider relationships and spirituality. I also play with ideas about energies, nature and human connections to both. (‘fantastic writer a true grasp of the spiritual’: SEG)

Starla Huchton
Upon the Wings of Greater Things, the creative endeavours of Starla Huchton

Worldper
Probably the grumpiest person I know, but a funny bugger and he knows how to write.

Free Fiction Online

An Opinionated Man
My goal with this blog is to offend everyone in the world at least once with my words… so no one has a reason to have a heightened sense of themselves. We are all ignorant, we are all found wanting, we are all bad people sometimes.

Ink and Bourbon
Tilting at windmills. Because those windmills think they’re better than us — This site is a central directory for the writings of a jaded, nigh unemployable paramedic. (‘A good guy, a great writer, and an inveterate cynic’: SEG)

jae erwin: dancing with life
In my writing I explore our deeper selves – those parts hidden from view. I consider relationships and spirituality. I also play with ideas about energies, nature and human connections to both. (‘fantastic writer a true grasp of the spiritual’: SEG)

WriterLot
A daily piece of writing from an international group of writers. Oh, and maybe some guests. (‘I’m on this site’ SEG)

Indie Authors

Colin F Barnes
A mate, a writer, a publisher, a man with fingers in so many pies I’m surprised the blackbirds ain’t eaten them all.

Ink and Bourbon
Tilting at windmills. Because those windmills think they’re better than us — This site is a central directory for the writings of a jaded, nigh unemployable paramedic. (‘A good guy, a great writer, and an inveterate cynic’: SEG)

jae erwin: dancing with life
In my writing I explore our deeper selves – those parts hidden from view. I consider relationships and spirituality. I also play with ideas about energies, nature and human connections to both. (‘fantastic writer a true grasp of the spiritual’: SEG)

Kathleen Gabriel's Store
Kathleen has had three novels published. Her short story, “Sonia” won an editors’ choice award from LineZero in February 2011. She is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop.

Firedance Books
This is the Firedance promise. That we will bring you books we think are great. Well-written. Fun. Inspiring. Cracking good reads. (have published me under both Stephen Godden and the pen-name T F Grant)

Fox Spirit Books
Fox Spirit believes that day to day life lacks a few things, like the fantastic, the magical, the mischievous, even a touch of the horrific. We aim to rectify that (have published me under the Pen-name T F Grant)